Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber today unveiled a £4m restoration of The Theatre Royal in London’s Drury Lane, as well as a new addition to thetheatre’s permanent collection of statues: of a copy of Canova's The Three Graces, bought by Lord Lloyd Webber for £600,000 in March this year.

There have been four theatres on the site since 1653 and the restoration, completed to mark the theatre’s 350th anniversary, has returned the public areas of the Rotunda, Royal Staircases and Grand Saloon, all of which were part of the 1810 theatre, to their original Regency style. Lord Lloyd Webber, who today called art and architecture his “first loves”, is delighted with the results.

“Architecturally, The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is the most important building of its kind in Britain,” Lord Lloyd Webber tells me in the vast Grand Saloon, which now has pastel pink walls, delicately restored capitals, and a newly revealed central window. “The Rotunda is [particularly] unique,” he adds. “Sadly the two or three other examples of Rotundas, certainly in London, were bombed, so ours is a rather unique survival.”

The newly rennovated Grand Saloon at The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

Keen to make the restoration as historically accurate as possible, Lord Lloyd Webber commissioned a specialist team to complete the painstaking work. “One of the things I hope people will see about this building is that we’ve taken the heritage side of it extremely seriously,” he tells me. “This room was covered in red wallpaper and we discovered underneath that nine layers of paint. You can forensically date precisely what happened when; we went right back to the original paintwork. The colour scheme all the way through [the restored areas] is exactly as it was.” The statues and pictures, which were part of the original decorative scheme, have also been cleaned and restored.

But Lord Lloyd Webber has yet more plans. “Not everything is here actually. I’ve realised now that we’ve removed all of the wallpaper that there are masses of niches for pictures. So I’m now suddenly aware that we need a dozen really huge great regency paintings. I’d quite like them to be theatrically based pictures, scenes from the plays. I can’t put my Victorian things in here because they would look all wrong. In a sense it’s a bit like moving into a new home and we’ll get bits and pieces as we go along”

This is the first of two restorations to take place at the theatre. “In the 1920s, they demolished the auditorium,” explains Lord Lloyd Webber. (It was rebuilt in around 1925.) “Our biggest problem at the moment is that there are still things I would love to be able do to this part of the building but can’t because they don’t marry up with the auditorium, which is from 115 years later."

Some of Lord Lloyd Webber’s plans include “unboxing” the theatre’s staircases to reveal their original Regency shape, and creating a terrace area on the flat roof at the front of the theatre, which will be accessed from the Grand Saloon.

Having only taken full possession of the areas for restoration on January 6 of this year, Lord Lloyd Webber’s team have been working flat out to complete the work. “It has been like a military campaign," says Lord Lloyd Webber. But he has clearly enjoyed every moment.

“I am a firm believer in the importance of preserving Britain's architectural heritage for current and future generations to enjoy. I do not personally take any income from the theatres every penny of any profit they make goes back into maintaining and restoring the buildings. It’s a real joy to have been able to do it. It’s my passion come alive."